The Robe
by Lady Gwenevere Smith
Summary: It is his scarlet banner of justice. It has protected many from harm. But there is more to the man than just the cape.


**The Robe**

When he put out the fire in the old lady's house, he sheltered her in the warmth of that heavy cloth, wrapping it around as his biological mother must have done on that fateful day when she and his father sent him away from a certain death and into a new and uncertain life. They needn't worry, though. The life their only son leads is a life of example, a life of mercy, compassion, hope, kindness, and love for all. It is not, however, a life of gladness, and joy, at least not most of the time. Though it adorns his broad and powerful shoulders like a magnificent sheet of liquid rubies, this cloth has swaddled the poor, the homeless, the dying, the sick and the wounded, the abandoned and the forgotten, the hungry and those ravaged by destruction, the scared and the devastated, the old and the young; they have all been held in their last, futile moments by this cloth.

But then things changed. He gave up the cape, and took on a newer, sleeker, silver designed suit that subconsciously or not, mirrored his cold, grey, and ultimately lifeless trip to a world that he knew was dead.

When he returned, he was hesitant to once again strap on that red garment. Why should he? In his absence, things hadn't changed, at least not for the better. It was as though he and his cape had never existed. Fires raged, and storms wiped cities from the map. The gears of war still clanked on endlessly. Children still starved, and the evil and the selfishly ambivalent stood idly by, almost yawning in their bored indifference. Why should he once again fly that banner for justice, when clearly, there was no justice in the world?

But then his mother, the one that he'd know for as long as he could remember, the one that had cooked him cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning and packed his lunch with an apple from the tree outside his window, she came in, with a wicker basket attached to her withered old hip. In that peeling old basket was that illustrious piece of fabric. It was washed and folded neatly, with the kind of care only a mother can give to such things. She set it down before him, as a sort of peace offering, her way of showing that she forgave him for leaving it and the duty it represented behind. And then she sat down next to him, her aged frame creaking slightly with the effort. She placed one bony, work worn hand on his knee, and cupped his downcast face in the other. Her kind eyes, surrounded by worry lines that all good mothers possess, looked into his deeply blue, foreign eyes. Though she said nothing, he knew what she meant. And so he nodded resignedly, his ebony hair flowing into his eyes, only to be quickly swept away by his mother's hands. She kissed him gently atop his head, and stood up, without another word, leaving him to himself.

A day later, that very same cape streaked across the sky in a flash of crimson as he soared back into breathtaking action to catch a falling rocket in the bare palms of his masculine hands. He was back.

It caught the fragments of the bullets as they flattened out and bounced off of his taught muscles like rubber balls of a marble floor. It trailed behind him powerfully as he strode purposely up to meet his opposite, a man so vile that the sky itself seemed to have turned its face away from the twisted abomination of a land that he had created. Red and white. The color of blood, of love, of anger, of passion and fire, versus the color of purity, the color with all colors, the color of cleanliness. Yet these colors couldn't have swathed two more different men. One was tall, and broad, with a face of angles and striking handsomeness. The other was short and puffed, with a sallow, pouched and aged face that housed dead eyes that stared hungrily from their deep setting.

And then the red fell, brought down by a tiny shard of green. Green, the color of life, used to bring about a slow and painful death. A death by the slow leaking of scarlet blood.

It is cold, so very bitterly cold, now. The icy water swirls around him, like a wicked boa constrictor. It courses down his throat, the salt burning the inside of his mouth and ripping the top layer of his tongue. He twists frantically in a desperate attempt to claw his way to the surface, just for a change to gulp one last bit of air before he is dragged down once more by the weight of his cape. It's irony at its best, how that once bright crimson flag of justice is now going to be the death of the world's greatest crime fighter.

That cape, which had flapped lazily in the breeze as he descended to his lover's balcony that fateful night, the cape that had wrapped itself around her naked body after he'd made love to her for the first time, it is that very cape that she grabs first. One hand over the other, she hauls it towards her, as though she were climbing up a rope in gym class. As cloth gives way to cold, hard flesh, she struggles to uphold the man who carries the world upon his shoulders. She pulls and tugs, heaves and finally, he is safe. She cradles his head in her lap, his porcelain skin standing out violently against the midnight black of his hair, and the wine of his robe. Different colored eyes watch worriedly, nimble hands searching frantically for a way to rid him of the poison slowly seeping through his veins; emerald fumes that turn his blood to a toxic brown. And then he cries out in pain, a cry of feral pain— a cry that slices through her cold and small heart like a white hot, newly re-forged sword. Bright, baby blue eyes turn in awkward concern to see from whence the cry originated. Eyes that see more than they want to see. Eyes that turn back around to the task at hand, and harden with concentration at getting out alive.

The red cape slowly leaves the floor to follow its owner to cleave once again to the healing rays of the golden orb that burns so brightly in the heavens. It fans out magnificently behind its master, as though a peacock showing off its glorious plumage one last time before it is plucked.

The golden light fades to be replaced with narrow, intense, burning heat, a heat so intense that the earth itself melts away from its blast.

And then the grey monstrosity starts to shake, to violently loosen itself from the clutches of the sea floor below. And in the middle of the grey that falls away is the red. The red that sheds itself for life. Up, up, up it climbs, to the point that it can no longer give any more. All fades to black, as the ultimate sacrifice is made. The cape floats out, weakly, seemingly no longer able to uphold its duty. It fails helplessly behind its slain master, fluttering faster and faster, until it collides once again with the cold, hard, brown earth. It lies there, still, and dark, the luster lost to the point that it is almost indistinguishable from the dirt below it.

But then the life returns to the lifeless. Breath fills the chest that was once still. And when his sapphire eyes open, the first thing he focuses on is the gently draped red cloth, laid with obvious care across the chair. And so he slowly stands, and pulls it on once again. Here stands the king, draped in the majesty of his royal clothes, aching shoulders squared away adorned once again in the color of his ancient and noble family. Superman has returned.


End file.
